Harsh
reality
awaits
Rowland

Rowland, 47, faces 15 to 21 months in prison when he is sentenced for corruption on Friday. Once Connecticut's youngest-ever governor, Rowland's prison job prospects include cleaning toilets, cutting grass and kitchen or library duty.

"The reality will hit John Rowland when a federal correction officer orders him to strip down and bend over," said Leonard Grimaldi, who was recently released from a federal prison camp in Otisville, N.Y., for engaging in corruption in Bridgeport. "He's going from being for 10 years the single most powerful person in Connecticut to another person who has just lost his liberty."

The three-term Republican is expected to do his time at a minimum security prison, most likely in Otisville or Fort Dix, N.J. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons tries to place inmates close to their homes.

Rowland, treated to vacations, Cuban cigars, pricey suits and a hot tub when he was in power, now will be told when to shower and eat. A piercing flashlight and jangling keys will greet him in the night when guards take attendance.

Days away from learning his fate, Rowland is anxious but remarkably stoic, said the Rev. Cornell Lewis, a confidante who recently met with him.

"He's doing a lot better than I would have thought for someone who has never been in the criminal justice system," Lewis said. "I looked at him closely. This guy seems to have his emotions under control."

Rowland admitted to trading access to his office for more than $100,000 in repairs to his summer cottage, private flights to Las Vegas and Vermont vacations.

A notoriously bad bluffer during poker games at the governor's mansion, Rowland will have plenty of opportunities for card games if he serves his time at Otisville. But the prison commissary carries De Nobili Kings, an inexpensive brand of domestic tobacco compared to the thousands of dollars worth of Cuban cigars a state contractor gave him.

"They're not the cigars you're used to," said former Waterbury Mayor Joseph Santopietro, who served time for corruption at Otisville. "You're not going to enjoy cigars like you did with cognac after dinner."

If he is sent to Fort Dix, Rowland will join former Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr. and former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim. Rowland had quickly urged Ganim, a Democrat who was sentenced to nine years for corruption, to resign after he was indicted.

Cianci, a colorful mayor who enjoyed his city's fine Italian restaurants, smokes less and has lost 35 pounds since he was sent to prison for corruption, friends said. He does a lot of walking, light weightlifting and reading, said Artin Coloian, Cianci's former chief of staff.

"I think he's eating more nutritionally balanced," Coloian said. "He's big on fruits and vegetables. I'm sure it's been difficult but you wouldn't know it when you see him. He keeps a stiff upper lip."

Rowland will enter a world of drug dealers, insider traders and tax cheats.

Given his age, Rowland will probably sleep on the top bunk in an 8-foot-by-8-foot cubicle he'll share with another inmate known as his "celly."

"He'll feel like he's sleeping in a catcher's mitt," Grimaldi said.

The former governor will be counted five times daily and could wind up in isolation for a week or two if he misses a count.

Rowland will choose from a cafeteria-type menu that features baked macaroni and sloppy joes. White Castle hamburgers are available in the vending machines.

As for health care, the dental chair at Otisville doubles as a barber chair.

Rowland will wear an anonymous set of green prison scrubs. He can keep his wedding ring, but little else.

"It's you and nobody else," Santopietro said. "Your family gets to visit but they get to go home. There are no fences, no wires. You just know you can't cross that imaginary line. When you don't get to go home at night, when you don't get to go to the store whenever you want, when you don't get to be with your family, it's not a camp. It's prison."